This one is basically the logical next step after I did the analysis of various tablets with respect to its DOM performance. After testing tablets, now I am switching to smartphones. The methodology is the same: leveraging Dromaeo set of DOM tests.
Here is the graph for the impatients:
The full breakdown is also available, left-to-right: iPhone 4, Nexus S, Nokia N950, Galaxy S II, Palm Pre 2.
(Special thanks to my linguist friend and self-proclaimed professional penguin lover Donald Carr for providing Galaxy S II result, my favorite web designer Jay Robinson for letting me use his iPhone for few minutes, and a PreCentral forum member Matt Williams for sharing the Pre 2 data).
It is better not to trust the numbers as exact scientific results, but more like a traditional rough estimate (the noise was quite high than usual, maybe because it is a phone and not only a simple tablet) . In all cases, it is pretty obvious that Galaxy S II is screaming fast, possible due to its dual-core Exynos (aka Orion) CPU. The rest of the phones have comparable SoC: Cortex A8 at 1 GHz (just single core).
Great respect to the folks behind the Harmattan browser because N950 (the Qt phone) is in the same league as iPhone 4. Nexus S, once regarded as the best Android phone, quickly fades out, a proof that the Android world is moving at a crazy speed. Interesting to notice how Pre2 is better than Nexus S, though it does even have a lot of room of (software) improvements consider N950 can push the number by quite a margin.
Of course, the fun part is now the extrapolated speculations we are obliged to make. There is no doubt that the upcoming iPhone 5 (or however it would be called) rumored to be announced in few months will likely raise the bar further. If you check previous tablet comparison, iPad 2 is the ultimate winner and there is no reason iPhone 5 can’t reach the same numbers. Having said that, an army of dual-core (and likely also quad-core) Android phones will force the numbers to march further, in a hope that this translates to a better user experience.
Fun time ahead!